DC Comics Takes A Moment To Piss Me Off

I woke up to find someone had e-mailed me a link to CBR where I read this shit.

Sadly, DC Comics announced today at MegaCon that the creative team that launched the title in May 2009 is leaving the book following the release of “Power Girl” #12. The new team replacing writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (“Jonah Hex”) and artist Amanda Conner is expected to be announced next week.

MOTHER F#%&ERS!

You know, I’m not going to say that whatever creative team comes on next won’t be great, because they could be. But damned if they could live up to the exceptional style that has been present on this book since issue one. Palmiotti and Gray understand how to make the character work without falling into thirty two pages of boob jokes, and Amanda Conner is about as perfect an artist as you can get on any title.

What I’m afraid of is that all the life is going to get sucked out of this title and within another three issues it’ll get canceled. Probably one of the best books DC has launched in years will see the same fate as the other great books that get shafted for no reason at all.

If you look at the comic book industry through a long-term lens. This shit should be infuriating. A new title launches with a character you enjoy, and for once they put a competent creative team with an amazing artist on it. For a character like PG, who isn’t an A-Lister in any sense of the word, you hope for a kind of stability. Because, as I’ve said in the past, in the modern publishing climate, you only have a short while to establish yourself in order to not get canceled, and for PG to last 12 issues is a testament to the creative team doing something right.

Now, as a consumer you’ve invested 12 months into a title. Everything is established and you’re happy with where it has progressed, now the paradigm shifts and EVERYBODY on board from writer to inker gets shifted off. You have to imagine that at least a sizeable percentage of the readers of that book will decide to jump off at that very point. The hope, on the part of the publisher, is that the new team will bring in people to make up the difference. But, in today’s climate, not to many people like to jump onto a book at issue 13, even if it is a new creative team without having read what has come before it. And considering that the first six issues of this particular series haven’t been collected, there is no easy format for transition. Also, like I said, PG isn’t exactly an A-lister, so unless the new team is A-List talent, the ration of incoming:outgoing is going to be skewed.

Why does all of this matter?

Revolving door creative teams buttfuck small titles into cancellation. That’s why. It’s a kick in the balls to diversity in publishing. If this book gets canceled due to a new creative team not catching on, chances are the publisher will not want to place blame on the talent, they’ll say that “the character just doesn’t connect” and then that character, who a great many people have invested time and money in, get shafted because the publisher doesn’t want to invest time in him/her anymore.